


darling, darling, please wait for me

by tieria



Category: HuGっと！プリキュア | Hug tto! Precure
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Post-Canon, Reunions, background Masato/Henri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-19 05:23:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17595356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: It takes longer than the two of them ever would have imagined, but Emiru and Ruru find each other again.





	darling, darling, please wait for me

**Author's Note:**

> So the finale epilogue emotionally destroyed me and made my physically incapable of /not/ writing a story like this. I think I'm still crying? Anyway, I hope you enjoy the fic ;;

Aisaki Emiru is fourteen years old the day she realizes that she will never, ever see Ruru again. She sobs and she bawls and she locks herself in her room, wanting so desperately to turn her sadness into song but refusing to touch her guitar. Because that’s what she’s realized- that’s what’s paining her so. Masato sneaks his way in, sits on the bed beside her and waits patiently for Emiru to tell him what’s wrong. And in the face of his quiet support- remembering what happened the last time she’d kept all her sadness in- she has no choice but to allow it. 

“Music,” she sobs, clutching at Masato’s sweater, hunched over on top of her red and purple comforter, “Ruru… Ruru didn’t… she didn’t..!”

_ She didn’t know what music was. _

And Masato tries his best to comfort her, he really does. But Masato has it easy. Henri didn’t have to go back to a future that Masato could never reach. He’s just a phone call away. They can overcome their pain a united force, just like how she used to be with Ruru. The only difference is, they get to be together  _ forever.  _

And like a signal, Ruru’s words ring in her head soft and clear-  _ I love you. I’ll wait for you in the future. _

It only makes her sob harder. Masato pats her gently on the back, and that, at least, is a bright spot in the darkness. Even if Ruru is gone, she’s not alone. There are people who understand her, and care for her. She’ll never be alone again.

_ Okay. _ Emiru takes a deep, deep breath. Ruru will exist again eventually. 

_ Okay, _ she tells herself, wiping the tears from her cheeks,  _ okay. _ She can wait. She’s done harder things a million times over during her time as Cure Macherie. Even if it takes a decade, and none of Emiru’s dreams have come true-

Even if it takes a hundred years, and Emiru is old and shriveled and doesn’t have the voice to sing anymore-

Even if it takes a thousand years and she has to find the secret of immortality-

Emiru will wait. She’ll wait, and believe, and sing about their happily ever after.

 

Emiru is eighteen years old when she becomes famous for her love songs. They are soft and they are powerful, they are tender and they are evocative. But Emiru knows herself well enough to realize that they’re mostly just longing. 

It’s not that she only writes love songs, of course- she can write one hell of a rock and roll anthem, dabbles in feel-good pop about friendship and how sometimes the power to change the world comes mostly from believing in yourself- but, to borrow the words of her reviewers, there’s something  _ different _ about her love songs, something transcendent and touching that brings even the hardest of hearts to tears.

Well, Emiru’s not sure about that, exactly. But if she’s going to become a star, then there’s no better way to do it than singing about Ruru. And, she realizes in retrospect, it makes her a pretty penny that she’s free to spend however she pleases, without anyone questioning where her sudden interest in robotics comes from.

It takes her longer than she expects to find the man named Doctor Traum- and when she does, it turns out that he’s been under her nose the entire time. He’s a professor at a local university- or really, a researcher that just happens to teach an extremely eccentric class that Emiru almost signs herself up for in a fit of whimsy. 

(She doesn’t, and isn’t sure if she’s just dodged a bullet or missed an opportunity. Some things, she thinks, are better left unknown.)

He doesn’t question why she’s helping his dream come true. Not why she provides financial support for test after failed test, after all other investors have long since pulled out of the project over certainty phrased as concerns that his work will never come to fruition. She doesn’t explain why she has faith in him. Perhaps she’d sound silly if she did. 

But she has faith, and that’s what matters over the course of the next three years. That’s what pays off. When the call comes Emiru scrambles to pick up her phone, answers breathless when she sees Traum’s name on the screen. She manages a shaky, anticipatory- “Hello?”

Traum on the other end doesn’t waste time. “She’s ready.”

“I’m on my way,” Emiru replies, and dashes out to his lab. It hardly matters if she’s making a scene. She doesn’t even register it, because in her mind there’s only one word remaining, repeating a desperate mantra.  _ Ruru, Ruru, Ruru..! _

And then Ruru is before her, with hair tied up in pigtails and with a dress that vaults Emiru eleven years into the past at first sight. This isn’t the Ruru that she fought alongside- in this world, Cure Amour no longer exists. But Emiru falls to her knees before the android with Ruru’s face who looks so how Emiru used to and can’t do anything but sob as relief and hope and pain and love crash over her all at once. Her truest friend, her very first love. And even though this Ruru doesn’t understand, Emiru pulls her into an embrace. 

_ This is the start, _ she thinks,  _ this is the beginning of our new song. _

 

Ruru doesn’t grow at the same rate as a human child. Emiru isn’t well-versed enough in either robotics or philosophy to understand why, but she thinks it might be because Ruru spends most of her time around adults. She knows that to Traum that it must be bittersweet- catches it in his sad smiles and wistful looks whenever Ruru insists she wants to spend time alone with Emiru. But he allows it, and Emiru is desperately, overwhelmingly thankful.

(She doesn’t ask what happened to his blood daughter- she doesn’t dare. By now, she’s old enough both to guess and to realize that wound isn’t her place to soothe. But it is Ruru’s. So she makes sure not to spirit her away, to make sure she bonds with her father just as much as Emiru. In this life, they deserve it.) 

But when Emiru drops in today, something is different. Ruru sits with legs crossed and eyes fixed on something playing softly across the television screen. Emiru can’t see from the angle of the door, but she recognizes the sound of battle and magic, the soundtrack of her life since eleven years old. It must be a news broadcast then, covering the Pretty Cure of somewhere that isn’t here.

“Emiru?” Ruru calls with a tone that bodes badly for whatever is about to come next. Still Emiru answers, because she can’t deny Ruru a single thing in this life or the next.

“Yes?”

“I… Ruru Amour… was a Pretty Cure.” It is not a question. Emiru isn’t foolish enough to treat it as one when it’ll only make Ruru frustrated. She nods.

“You were. A strong, brilliant Pretty Cure of love!”

If Emiru were to close her eyes then she would see those days almost a decade past as clear as if she’d been standing in them still. Their miracle, their power, Ruru’s arms around her and hand in hers always. The songs they’d sung together ring through her head what seems like every moment they’re apart. 

In the present, Ruru blinks. The silence is uncomfortably heavy as it hangs over their heads.

“But I don’t remember any of that,” she says, staring at Cure Amour reflected so brilliantly across the television screen. And for a moment, Emiru is too caught up in the spell to realize she’d guessed wrong. She’s twelve again, standing by Ruru’s side starry-eyed and enthusiastic and sure that they’ll overcome even the future already written.

It’s vivid. It’s real. Her heart aches in her chest.

It’s only just a memory.

“No,” she says, and shakes her head sharply as if that will help the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. “It’s complicated, but that happened before you were born.”

Ruru watches her with sharp eyes. Already does she understand so much; Emiru wonders just when she’d forgotten what it meant to have Ruru see straight through her. “Before I was born…”

The silence hangs. Emiru feels everything start to break.

“Your best friend. That wasn’t me, was it?” Ruru asks not with bitterness. She asks it as if she knows. Emiru finally admits to herself that Ruru probably always has. 

“I still care for you,” Emiru says, because she can’t quite muster up the courage to say  _ yes. _ “Very, very much. You’re still my precious friend.” 

“But I’m not Cure Amour.” Ruru pauses, though it’s clear she’s not waiting for an answer. She looks down at her hands, flipping them over as if really  _ seeing _ them for the first time. “And if I became a Precure… Then I wouldn’t become Cure Amour, would I? I’d become someone else.”

“I… I don’t know,” Emiru replies, because Cure Amour is Ruru, but what happens when Ruru isn’t herself? No one prepared her with the answers for this. She falters. For the first time, she can’t give what Ruru is asking.

And Ruru understands. She must, because the next time she lifts her head it’s with a smile as she asks, “Will you teach me how to play guitar?”

Emiru accepts the peace offering with no small amount of relief. She’d always been hoping that Ruru would ask, after all.

 

There are a few things that Emiru knows must be written into the soul of a person. How to love, how to have courage, and faith, and hope, and all the lovely things that let a person become a Pretty Cure. And in Ruru’s case, musical talent must be written there right next to all the other things Emiru fell in love with so completely. 

She picks up the songs that Emiru once sang with Ruru as easily as breathing, and writes new ones easily as if it was what she was born for. She loves to dance, and Emiru runs out of things to teach her in barely a month. Brilliant in every form- that’s the Ruru she’s always adored. 

When they perform together, she wants to call them  _ Twin Love. _ She’s practically been counting down the days until she could stand on stage and sing her heart out with Ruru again. But this isn’t… Ruru isn’t the  _ same _ Ruru. No matter how much a part of Emiru still longs, still hopes and prays and shouts to meet Ruru again- she knows this is different. 

They don’t end up forming a unit after all.They play guitar and sing and dance in private, little tunes that Emiru turns into singles credited to an anonymous co-writer, sometimes. The rumors swirl, and the paparazzi swarms, but Emiru brushes it all off. 

_ It doesn’t have to be the same, _ she tells herself,  _ just as long as it’s something. That’s what matters. That’s what I waited for. _

 

And it is something. Her very best friend. With a different set of memories and a different frame of reference, but her very same friend that she makes time for every day she can. Some weeks she lives more in Traum’s home (that’s more a laboratory, really) than her own. She’s long since been given a key; today as always, she lets herself in.

But there’s no one there to answer her friendly  _ hello _ with an equally warm welcome. That isn’t unusual- both Traum and Ruru are the types to get involved in things and tune out the rest of the world, especially when she drops by unannounced. Faintly can she hear noise from the study, and she makes her way towards it quietly. When she reaches the door, she can tell that they’re speaking in low, serious voices. Emiru presses her back to the wall and tries to pretend that she isn’t listening- eavesdropping has never exactly been her proudest habit- but something tells her this is important, and it’s not just the grave feeling in the air.

“Is that what you want to do?” asks Traum. There’s a short pause in which Emiru guesses that Ruru must be nodding, then he continues, “You’ll be all on your own if you do. I won’t be there. Neither will Emiru.”

Emiru’s heart drops down to the floor and shatters. She stays still as death, dares not even to breathe.  _ Ruru? Why would she be all on her own? _

“Even so,” Ruru says, and the strength in her voice is unwavering, “I want to go. That’s what I decided.”

There is another long silence- or not a silence, really. It’s broken by a long sigh, a rustle of fabric and a quiet little sniffle that neither party would admit to, if Emiru turned the corner then and there. 

And Ruru continues, terribly quiet- “I’m happy. I’m so happy for what you and Emiru taught me. But I want to do this. I want to prove to myself I can. So thank you. For everything.”

Emiru can’t listen to another word- before she registers the impulse she’s already halfway down the hall and out the front door, pulling it closed as quietly as she can and sinking to the ground with her back against it. She buries her head in her arms and tries to pretend that her sleeves are wet with anything besides tears, berating herself all the while. She should’ve known- hadn’t the last time taught her anything? Nothing lasts forever. Not for her.

She’s going to lose Ruru again, and this time, there’s not a single thing she can do to stop it.

_ (Once again, the song has come to an end.) _

* * *

Ruru Amour returns to the future. She does it on a train of Traum’s creation, flying on its own rails through the sky as it leaves behind the world that Ruru has grown to love so deeply- and everyone she loves in it.

_ I’ll love you always. I’ll be waiting for you in the future.  _

But surely they’ll be here to welcome her. It will have been many, many years for them, but just an instant for Ruru. As the train soars down from the sky and settles down in the same park decades in the future Ruru can’t help but shift in her seat, glancing left and right, fiddling with her hands for any sight of a welcoming party. Though she doubts they’d know the exact date- which means she’ll have to go and find them. The second the train grinds to a halt Ruru leaps from her seat, bursts out into the park in search of her answer- and then stops dead in the middle of the path.

“Time is still stopped,” she says, turning a circle beneath the grey sky. Her own words stab into her heart, make her knees unsteady as she stares out at this patchwork world- a little bit full of hope, but mostly just drowning in its own despair. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. This isn’t the promise she made to Emiru- to any of them. 

Behind her everyone exchanges wary glances; she only peripherally registers them. And she realizes, crushingly, as if the sky’s just come crashing down on her head, that she’s the only one who didn’t realize the implications of  _ this _ being the future to which they were returning. 

 

Ruru learns many things about her future, now that she cares enough to understand it. She learns that there is no Nono Hana, or Kagayaki Homare. There is no Wakamiya Anri, no Yakushiji Saaya, no Aisaki Masato. And though she hesitates- although she already knows the answer, far before she summons up the courage to ask- there is no Aisaki Emiru. 

Of course Emiru isn’t here. There’s no music, in the future. At the realization her hands tremble, her vision turns blurry and wet. The PreHeart in her pocket feels so very heavy, a half of a whole. 

For a long while, she’s inconsolable. Some petty part of her she didn’t know existed until this return to the future can’t help but feel slighted by this lie of omission, this well-meaning deceit. No one told her Emiru wouldn’t be here. No one warned her against making promises she couldn’t keep.

But the sorrow can only keep its hold over her for so long. With dry eyes and a reformed resolve does Ruru pick up her guitar. This changes many things, but not all of them- not the reason Ruru returned to the future in the first place. She has the songs that Emiru taught her, and the love that still remains in her heart. She’s going to bring music to the world. And she’s going to do it with a love song.

 

Most of the people that Ruru knows are no longer here- but there is a Doctor Traum, and a Hariham Harry, and a whole host of ex-coworkers that are determined to make the world a place overflowing with hope for the future once again. It doesn’t come easily, and some days the despair threatens in on them all- but they’ve all experienced what it means to be a Pretty Cure filled with courage at least once in their lives, and they refuse to relinquish that save to a gentle embrace to empower others in turn.

So they’re still here, and still fighting. 

And most importantly, perhaps- there is a Cure Tomorrow. 

They don’t get to meet immediately. Ruru only hears the whole story after the fact, but apparently it takes Cure Tomorrow- Kurai Hagumi- a fair amount of time to return to her former body. Or more appropriately, Ruru thinks, her proper age. She’s a sweet girl, and her optimism reminds Ruru immediately of Hana, with a splash of gentle compassion that’s all her own. And it’s a good thing, too- there are days where the despair is strong as any danger she’d ever faced down as a team, and Ruru doesn’t want to think about what might happen if she didn’t have her allies beside her. Ruru is unused to transforming alone, but having Hagumi there to stand by her is reassuring, even if the movements and sentiments behind them are all different. 

She also becomes the first friend Ruru makes in this timeline, even if they were technically friends from a long, long time ago. They create many routines, living out the long days together, but this one is their favorite- sitting at the top of the tower, legs hanging off the side and eyes set on the horizon, relaxing after a hard day’s work.

“You’ve made the future so  _ bright,” _ Hagumi says, and hums the song that Ruru has been playing lately. It’s the first one that she’s composed entirely on her own, and though she likes to think she’s gotten better since then, something about this one is nostalgic. Only now does Ruru understand why- it’s a love song, written before she knew what love songs really  _ were. _

She opens her mouth to accept the praise, and offer the same in return. But what comes out instead is, wistfully- “Do you think they would be proud?”

Hagumi tilts her head and smiles. “I think they’d be prouder than anything.” She pauses, glances to the sky and clasps her hands together as she ducks her head. A faint, golden light dances about her like a refraction of the setting sun, and then she continues, “No. I  _ know _ they’re proud of us. And a certain someone is prouder of you than anyone.”

Ruru wants to smile, but somehow, the only thing that comes out is a quiet sigh not quite a sob.

“You must miss her very much,” Hagumi says softly, and takes Ruru’s hand between two of hers. And Ruru is grateful- she really is- but something in the depths of her can’t help but with those hands were Emiru’s instead. An impossible wish, a longing unfulfilled. 

“I want to see her again,” Ruru admits, soft into the sunset. The city spreads out far beneath them, the ocean stretching far as the eye can see. Like this, Ruru can pretend that Emiru is just beyond the sea, and that if she sings with all her strength, perhaps she might just hear. It’s a fantasy, but at least it’s a comforting one.

(She doesn’t register the way Hagumi looks at her then, gentle and considering and just the tiniest bit scheming. 

But in the end, perhaps that’s for the best.)

 

The years pass, and Emiru only falls further and further back into her memories. There is still injustice and fear in the world, but hope grows in leaps and bounds with every rise and set of the sun, and people have learned what it means to face the future with a smile and warm embrace again. 

The years pass, and Ruru still misses Emiru more than anything.

There is only one person she can think to ask. Only one person who would understand the timelines, and only one who would have the knowledge and skill required to allow her to cross them. She calls them to the park where decades ago Beauty Harry once stood beside a grand old tree, and lowers her head as she makes her selfish request.

“Please,” she begs, hating the way that her voice breaks. It isn’t that she’s unhappy, here with her father. It’s not that she’s unsatisfied, being Cure Tomorrow’s partner in the world that’s finally regained its bearings. It’s not that she regrets bringing music and hope back to a world that had forgotten what it meant to love wholly and boldly, despite the risk of getting hurt.

She just wants to see Emiru again. Nothing more, and nothing less.   

“They grow up so fast,” Traum says, quiet to himself. He turns his back to her, turns his head to the blue sky above. Wisps of clouds trail past, lazy in the afternoon sun. The world isn’t quite peaceful, but in the moments like these, Ruru can believe that one day it will be. When he turns back, his smile is nothing but genuine. “I’ve been working on something special. It was terribly hard to keep it a secret, you know! You may not know, but I have a terribly sharp daughter who catches on to all my surprises-”

Ruru cuts him off with a glare. Traum acts terribly offended, but he still smiles as he gets to the point, long since aware that Ruru’s jabs mean nothing. “Cure Tomorrow brought me a fascinating idea. Your PreHeart is a temporal anomaly. It shouldn’t exist in our timeline, nor should Cure Amour. The PreHeart that you received in your miracle already contains traces of a strange energy that we’ve managed to attribute to what must be pure… And,” he finishes, taking note of Ruru’s deepening glare that means, quite simply,  _ please get to the point, father- _ “I’ve already run a few successful tests. Do you understand, Ruru? This means that I’ve been working on a machine that can harness enough energy to cross not just time or space, but an entire  _ timeline.” _

Ruru’s heart lifts with a brilliant, floaty hope that has her bouncing on her toes in a way that would’ve made her wonder if she was malfunctioning, a decade ago. “When will it be ready?” 

“How about now?” Traum says, a glint in his eye as he clears his throat and pulls a button from his coat and twirls with it before pressing it down firmly with his thumb. The ground shakes at their feet, and from beneath the shade of the ancient tree emerges a capsule, sparkling and colorful and just the right size for a closet, had it been any less whimsical. 

Ruru can’t believe her eyes. She doesn’t know how long they’d been planning this, or how much work it must have taken. But she does know that, despite meaning that it would mean they’d leave her, they’d done it all anyway. 

For a while longer, she can’t find her words. What’ll she even need? She has her PreHeart and Mirai Crystal on her already, and she supposes she doesn’t need to worry about clothes or food or things like that, but...

“My guitar-” Ruru begins, but Traum points towards the capsule- and sure enough, Ruru runs to it and inside it is, placed neatly on a stand. The years have seen it used and worn, but still does Ruru treasure it, keep it carefully maintained as one of her fondest memories of the past that had once been her present.

“That’s an anomaly, too!” he yells, waving to her a lopsided goodbye with a plastered on smile.

But that’s not right.

Ruru turns on her heel and sprints back across the field, opens her arms wide and crashes into Traum with a force that sends the both of them sprawling to the ground. She probably knocks him breathless. In the moment, she hardly cares. “Thank you. Thank you so, so much.”

“Go see her,” he mutters soft into the top of her head, a hand running down the back of her hair, flowing long around her shoulders. 

And Ruru will. But there’s one more thing she has to say first. “You were the best father I could have asked for.”

“Even with everything I did?”

Ruru pulls back, looks Traum in the eyes. He’s crying; Ruru’s own vision is blurry, too. And she knows now that things weren’t good between them, in the beginning. That she didn’t understand the reason he’d bother reaching out to her emotionally, and that he’d given up and thrown her to the figurative wolves. But that’s not what matters. Not even in the slightest, given where they’d ended up. “Even with everything.” 

Traum hugs her close, and Ruru holds on tight, and then he’s slowly, gently pushing her away. “Go on now.”

Ruru hesitates. She does want to see Emiru as fast as possible, but it doesn’t feel right leaving like this- silent, without a word. “I want to say goodbye to everyone.”

“Well, you don’t have to wait to do that,” Traum says, and waves his hands wide. And Ruru doesn’t know where or when they appeared, but everyone has gathered, and it’s a flashback of a world she’d left behind a decade ago and faces she hasn’t seen in just as long. For the second time, she’s leaving everyone behind. And it’s bittersweet- it really, truly is. She’s going home, but she’s leaving it, too. 

They give her well-wishes in soft words and well-meaning smiles as she goes to each of them in turn. 

_ Make sure you become a star over there, too.  _

_ Leave this timeline to us! We’ll keep it safe, promise.  _

_ Make sure everyone else is doing well. _

_ Thank you so very much, Ruru. _

She pauses on the threshold of the machine, turns back with a smile to everyone in the second before the doors close. “‘Thank you,” she says, “I’ll miss you.”

And then she’s gone, vanished in a breath and a light that consumes gently and warmly. Ruru closes her eyes and lets it take her, a single name on her thoughts.  

* * *

Ruru is gone. After their last practice Ruru had bid farewell- the same as always, gentle and grateful and friendly as ever- but something in Emiru had known it was the end. And this time for real. Both of her precious friends, gone from her side. Both of them out of reach forever. 

She sits on her bed before flopping back and staring aimlessly at the ceiling, feeling hopeless at eleven or fourteen all over again. It’s then that her cell phone rings; Emiru picks it up without looking at the ID.

“May I speak with you?” Traum asks, and Emiru knows that he’s been left to deliver her the bad news. She’s not sure if that’s better or worse than Ruru telling her directly. In the end, it wasn’t her choice to make, anyway. Both times Ruru chose to leave, and both times Emiru’s been left behind to deal with the heartbreak. 

“Okay,” she says, and with the utmost reluctance drags herself from bed. She’ll have to hear it eventually. Might as well be brave and face it head on.

 

Traum’s lab is empty when she arrives, having scanned her pass as the door and strolled into the specific room she’d been directed to. It gives her an uneasy feeling, and she sits down before the capsule steps, left unused ever since the day Ruru was born again. There’s a few machines humming about absently, but Emiru doesn’t pay them any particular mind. They’re always doing this, and the background noise has always helped to soothe her anxieties with the way it’s almost rhythmic. Today they don’t really do much to help, but at least it’s something. 

And then-

Steps down the hallway, too light to be Traum’s. Emiru freezes. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Ruru hasn’t left quite yet, and it’s now that Emiru is going to have her heart crushed to shreds. She should have prepared herself. She always used to be ready for every little thing. Maybe losing that wasn’t such a good thing after all. 

But before she can consider it further, blessedly, apprehensively- someone steps into the doorway.

“Ruru?”

Emiru blinks. Something about her is different- the way she carries herself, the way she’s styled her hair around an older face, fluffy and free-flowing down her back and over her shoulders, just like… Just like… 

“Ruru?” she breathes, and the spell is broken. Ruru rushes across the room and wraps her up in a hug and twirls her across the floor as Emiru shrieks, a happiness that crashes over her and through her and spills out of her a single, beloved word- “Ruru!”

“Emiru,” Ruru returns, and Emiru doesn’t think she’s ever heard someone say her name with quite so much care, “Emiru!”

As Ruru twirls her a final time Emiru opens her mouth to say something, anything- but what comes out is the heaving kind of sob she didn’t know she could still make since she’d cried herself out at fourteen. 

“Why are you crying?” Ruru teases, and it only makes the tears fall faster down her cheeks. They’re practically the same height now; it doesn’t even take Emiru lifting onto tiptoe to wipe a matching drop from the corner of Ruru’s eye. 

“Why are  _ you _ crying?” she returns softly through the sniffles. And though they might both be seeing each other through the tears, there’s not a trace of sorrow left between them.

“Because I’m so happy to see you again.” Ruru says the words like they’re nothing, flying from her lips joyful and easy. But Ruru also says it like it’s  _ everything, _ a decade’s worth of loving and longing and hard work come finally to fruition. 

And Emiru wants to say,  _ I’m happy to see you too. _ But what comes out instead is, frantic and honest- “I love you.”

She almost wants to spare a moment to be mortified, but Ruru doesn’t allow it.

“I love you, too,” Ruru says, and Emiru’s heart soars straight out of her chest and into the softness of Ruru’s eyes. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

“Don’t be sorry. You’re here now.”

Ruru nods, and pulls back just slightly from the hug, enough to reach out and grab one of Emiru’s hand as she affirms, “I’m here now.”

“Together forever?” Emiru asks, and laces their fingers together until they’re palm to palm, tight enough that no one could ever tear them apart even with all the force in the world.

“Together forever,” Ruru affirms, and leans down, cupping Emiru’s face gently with her free hand. Emiru tilts her head up and meets Ruru halfway, eyes sliding closed as their lips meet for the first time- and, Emiru thinks distantly, most definitely not for the last.

_ (This time, I’m going to write a love song with you.) _


End file.
